sir56alot

This happens occasionally in my 2016 Octavia. As far as I can see, it’s nothing more than an annoyance to those of us in the UK - sometimes the gear-lever stops receiving the engine-switched-on message during use and alerts the driver via the dashboard message. That’s all. It could theoretically allow the engine to be started with the lever in a position other than P or N; hence the USA recall. This would only happen if the error happened to be occurring at the exact time the engine was last switched off, AND it was still occurring when the engine was next started, AND the driver hadn’t put the lever in P when they parked, AND the handbrake wasn’t fully applied.

Thanks to Bufesrac and Susuwatari, I had this exact problem and your solutions worked perfectly!